‘Crushed and crumpled’ caskets described at trial

The Arkansas funeral director who was asked to locate a body at Galilee Memorial Gardens in 2013 told a Shelby County Chancery Court jury about what he saw on the day he went to look for Renisha Johnson’s grave.

Derrick Gunn with Gunn Funeral Home in Little Rock was asked by Rodney Williams with Signature Funeral Services in Memphis to help find Johnson, who had been shot to death in July. Gunn went there on Nov. 3, 2013, and found a lot of activity.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Kathryn Barnett asked him how the caskets looked.

“Crushed and crumpled together,” Gunn said. “It was a casket on top of five caskets, and they were different directions. They wasn’t just stacked; they were sideways under this particular casket.”

After they realized Johnson wasn’t in that grave, they went to look in “another hole.”

“It had about five or six caskets in it as well stacked and crumpled all together,” Gunn said.

“Did you see them open them up to look at the people inside?” Barnett said.

“Yes. That’s how they made the determination that those people were not Renisha Johnson,” Gunn said.

They never Johnson, he said.

Gunn said as a consultant, he met with owner Jemar Lambert to try to make things right, but eventually contacted state authorities about what he’d seen. That’s when Galilee was shut down.

More than 1,200 people are plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit against Galilee, on Ellis Road in Bartlett, and the dozens of funeral homes that were contracted by those people to handle funeral services for loved ones. The lawsuit is for burials from 2011 and 2014.

The plaintiffs say it was the responsibility of the funeral home to ensure that their loved ones were buried properly.

A portion of the lawsuit reads: “The funeral home defendants contracted and charged for burial services and then, in violation of their contractual and legal duty, abandoned the remains at Galilee, negligently and recklessly failed to supervise the burials and, instead, allowed unlicensed agents and/or employees of Galilee to perform the burials and unlawful acts alleged in this complaint.”

However, the funeral directors have said leaving bodies at Galilee to be buried later was standard found practice there and that they are not responsible for how the cemetery mishandled bodies.

As a licensed funeral director, Johnson insisted under cross-examination from defense attorney Richard Sorin that it was the funeral directors’ responsibility to see to it that the caskets were buried.

All states have different laws that govern funeral homes and cemeteries, Gunn said.

“And one of the big, big differences between Arkansas law and Tennessee law is that the Arkansas law with regards to funeral directors specifically spells it out that the funeral director is supposed to stay until the burial is complete,” Sorin said.

When asked what he’d found about Tennessee law, Gunn asked Chancellor Jim Kyle for permission to use his cellphone. He then read a portion of state law that said funeral directors are responsible for the final disposition of human remains.

“And nowhere in there does it say that a funeral director is supposed to supervise the closing of the grave or supervise the burial, does it?” Sorin said.

The two also sparred over the sinkholes at Galilee, with Gunn testifying that he saw only one sinkhole at Galilee and that there should have been more, given the number of bodies that were supposed to be there.

Shun Newbern, the owner of Metropolitan Mortuary in Riverside, California, answered questions from the defense and acknowledged under cross-examination from Mike McClaren that he was not licensed in Tennessee and that he had not talked to the plaintiffs’ families or the funeral home directors named in the lawsuit.

In the morning, Newbern, a witness for the plaintiffs, discussed his training and the responsibility of funeral directors from the beginning of the process to the end.

He was questioned by plaintiffs’ attorney Brian Winfrey, who asked Newbern what he had observed to be the practice of licensed funeral directors.

“I observed that the job was complete at the grave once the casket was lowered and once the cemetery workers covered the grave,” said Newbern, a Memphis native who moved to California in the mid-1980s.

Newbern is also a licensed cemetery manager and has testified as an expert witness for the funeral industry for about 15 years.

Plaintiffs who testified told the jury that the lawsuit was not just for them, but for everyone they believe was wronged by the cemetery and the funeral homes.

The jury also saw portions of recorded depositions, including statements from Gerren Herndon with J.E. Herndon Funeral Home.

Herndon said he had witnessed one burial at Galilee before 2011 and none since then.

The caskets were left at a pavilion away from the burial site, and Herndon said he had not inspected the grave to make sure the body was buried.

And while statements from the plaintiffs’ attorneys and witnesses have discussed the “peace of mind” funeral directors provide families, that’s not what they’re selling, Herndon said in his deposition.

“If it gives you peace of mind, that’s a benefit,” Herndon said. “But I can’t say I’m in the business of selling you peace of mind.”

Last week, on the first day of the trial, hundreds of plaintiffs filled into Kyle’s makeshift courtroom, which was constructed on the third floor of the Vasco A. Smith Jr. County Administration Building.

There is also space for the dozens of lawyers representing the funeral homes named in the lawsuit.

During the investigation of the cemetery, officials found records were so disorganized that it’s possible that the exact location of many buried there may never be known.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.